


like looking into a mirror

by armethaumaturgy



Series: Multiverse #379 [3]
Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Blood and Injury, FGOD Error, First Meetings, Gen, Haphephobia, Mild Blood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-28
Updated: 2020-11-28
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:21:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27756826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/armethaumaturgy/pseuds/armethaumaturgy
Summary: Error meets someone who shouldn't be in the Anti-void, in the Anti-void. He's confused. And angry.
Series: Multiverse #379 [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2023511
Comments: 5
Kudos: 58





	like looking into a mirror

**Author's Note:**

> how do you even come to terms with something world shattering if you shut down every time it gets to be too much? i dont know, and neither does error!

“Template?”

BB stepped through his portal, looking around what the glitch liked to call an ‘abode’. Though he supposed it was one for him, as well. He was in more than out, most of the time. He couldn’t find him in the large white space, no matter how hard he looked.

“Template!” he called again, much to the same outcome. 

Maybe he was outside, playing a game of cat-and-mouse with Pale again? It didn’t feel like the Anti-void was empty, though. Sure, there was nothing to be seen for miles, but it was big. He knew firsthand just how far it stretched.

The air was filled with faint, static-y sounds, like an annoying buzz of an insect. BB cocked his head to the side, straining his ear canals for the direction where they were coming from. Once pinpointed, he started his journey of shotcutting through the white space, using the sounds as a guide.

Nothing came up for long minutes, just more white. The sounds were, however, getting louder and, admittedly, more annoying. Clearer, too. They started to resemble something he’d expect of a dial-up router trying its best to crawl its way back from the brink of a technological meltdown.

And then he was standing by a figure crumpled on the ground.

“Template?” he called out. His only response was a garbled, high-pitched noise, but his guess wasn’t surprising. The figure on the ground, from what he could see, was black! There was a blue scarf spilled on the ground, but the rest was obscured by a sea of glitches.

“Buddy, what’s wrong?” He dropped down into a squat and rolled the figure over.

Where he’d expected Template’s glasses covering his eyes was instead half a dozen of blue magic lines, the black hoodie not tied around the waist but instead worn properly. The sleeves seemed stitched on (more than once, from the frayed edges) and, honestly? It looked more like a coat than a hoodie.

“You’re not Template, are you?” he asked, knowing well that he wouldn’t get a response. The skeleton was glitching badly, sockets wide and unseeing. There was a puddle of half-dried blue marrow underneath them, and when touched, it flashed with white, glitched error messages. There was also a bar above the skeleton’s head, slowly climbing its way to the right, proudly displaying the message, ‘Rebooting: 84% complete.’

BB sat back and waited. The sounds coming from the other ranged in intensity as he did, at one point dying down to almost nothing only to come back, more warped than before. Idly, he wondered if he ever sounded like that. Template did, sometimes, but only when he was badly hurt.

He wasn’t sure how long he sat there, but he didn’t really want to leave the other alone. He’d never seen anyone like this, so maybe they were new? The Anti-void could be scary if you didn’t know where you were, or couldn’t get out on your own.

The progress bar climbed its way to 100% and faded away, along with the worst of the dial-up noises. The skeleton stirred, raising a head to their head, which was still glitching. A couple error messages refused to leave their body.

BB sat up straight, eyelights sparkling. “Hi! I don’t think we’ve ever met before?”

“Ugh,” the skeleton groaned, blinking a couple times before their head turned to BB and they squinted at him. “What the fuck happened…? Blue?”

“Oh, you’ve heard of me? That’s great! Where are you from? What AU? I haven’t seen a new glitch in so long!”

“...huh?” The glitched surrounding the other became a swarm of angry bees for a second, and then the other squinted even harder, looking BB up and down. The red sockets went wide. “What the—”

The skeleton jumped up to their feet, backing away from BB like they’d been scorched. 

“Blue?! What the fuck happened to you?! I— no, that’s impossible! I haven’t left you in the Anti-void that long! How—?”

“Oh! Um…” BB stood up as well, watching with no small amount of concern as the other started pacing back and forth, muttering to themself. “I’m not sure what you’re talking about? I’m Blueberror! But you can call me BB… haha, everyone does.”

The other skeleton’s eyelights — so similar to BB’s own, wow! — snapped to him, switching between squinting at him and widening in disbelief, like they couldn’t believe what they were looking at. Sure, BB knew he was nothing to write home about, but he’d gotten used to his new form! It wasn’t that bad!

“Bl— BB,” the skeleton stated, like they were trying how the name rolled off their metaphorical tongue. Their panic seemed to be gone, and their face set into a tense frown.

BB watched, confused, as they reached up to their face and… ripped the blue magic off their skull? He didn’t have the time to react before it turned into long, thin strings between the other’s fingers, and then he was wrapped up in them, arms pinned to his sides and his ankles bound together, which sent him to the ground in a messy tangle.

“Oof,” he exhaled, doing his best to wiggle out of the restraints. “What’re you doing?”

“Who are you?” the stranger asked, circling their fingers so the strings tying BB tightened to the point of being painful. Their voice was deep and filled with so much static they sounded like Template that one time BB had caught him unaware in a hug and got an earful that taught him nothing because he did not have ears.

“I told you! I’m Blueberror!”

“That’s impossible!” The strings tightened again and BB’s body glitched, flickering in and out for a moment, but that was enough for him to phase through them and catch his breath. 

“Oh gosh,” he muttered, rubbing at where the string had dug into his humerus. “That wasn’t very nice of you.”

“Tell me the fucking truth, shrimp! How did you glitch out?! There’s no way— we were just fighting! You couldn’t’ve been here that long!”

“Fighting? Haha, I haven’t even met you until now! I’m not sure what… maybe you’re confused?”

And that was exactly the time Template decided to make his appearance, stumbling through a glitched-out portal, trailing black ink. He was covered almost head to toe. BB took one look at him and burst out laughing.

Template shot him a look that would’ve been a deadpan, if he wasn’t pouting. “It was a tie! I swear!” he cried, but then he seemed to realize BB wasn’t the only one around to see him.

The new skeleton was standing deathly still, staring at Template as if he’d grown not one, but  _ two  _ extra heads, and then decided to shop them off.

“Who’s your new friend, BB? I’ve never seen them, are they from a new AU? Ooh, hiya, I’m Template, the mighty protector of all AUs and the whole multiverse!” He struck a pose, jabbing his pen into the ground in a way that had BB stifling a laugh again.

The new skeleton didn’t say a word. The buzzing intensified again, though nowhere near as loud as it had been when they were… rebooting, maybe? That was what the message said.

“Uh…” Template’s arms dropped to his sides when he didn’t receive any reaction to his introduction. “Who are you...?” They looked eerily similar to him; it was like looking into a mirror, except the mirror came from a mirror house at a carnival.

The skeleton seemed to share the sentiment. “Error,” he said finally. “I’m Error.”

“Great to meet you! Oh, just wait until Pale finds out we have one more of us!”

Template bound together and wrapped Error into a hug, his pen squishing into their sides. Error let out a cut-off cry, pushing against him before the glitches all around him flared up, coating his whole body.

The dial-up noises were back, and he fell limp against Template. Who, graciously looking a little sheepish, lowered him onto the ground.

The progress bar was back above Error’s head, but this time it seemed to be going significantly faster, already at 23%.

“Haha, oops?” Template chuckled, looking at BB. BB just shook his head.

“Great introduction. Couldn’t have gone better.”


End file.
